Execution of Mo. death row inmate halted again

Russell Bucklew is scheduled to die for killing a romantic rival as part of a crime spree in southeast Missouri in 1996. Bucklew is seen in this Feb. 9 file photo provided by the Missouri Department of Corrections.(Photo: AP)

A night of legal back and forth over the fate of a condemned Missouri inmate scheduled to die at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday has ended, for now, with the death again being halted.

U.S. Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito halted the death by lethal injection of Russell Bucklew, 46, convicted in the 1996 murder of a man who lived with his ex-girlfriend, and the rape and kidnapping of his former girlfriend.

Bucklew argued that a birth defect that affects the condition of his veins would make his execution excruciating, a violation of the constitutional ban against cruel and unusual punishment.

On Tuesday evening, as the hours wound down to the hour of Bucklew's scheduled death, the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals halted the execution and, later, a full federal court reversed that move.

The Circuit Court of Appeals agreed that Bucklew's rare condition, which creates weakened and malformed veins, would create "unnecessary pain and suffering by the inmate."

Bucklew's impending execution heightened the nationwide debate over execution. The death by lethal injection would have been the nation's first execution since an Oklahoma incident April 29. An inmate writhed in pain before the procedure was called off. He died of a heart attack 43 minutes after the procedure began.

Lethal injection was already controversial because pharmaceutical companies increasingly refuse to supply the necessary drugs. Missouri corrections officials said their chemical cocktail would be more effective than the one used in Oklahoma.

Bucklew told The Guardian newspaper this month that he was fearful about what he would experience.

"I'm sick about it not working on me," he said. "I'm afraid that it's going to turn me into a vegetable, that I'd be brain-dead. You saw what happened down in Oklahoma."

Former Cape Girardeau County prosecutor Morley Swingle has called Bucklew "a pure sociopath."